1/31/2016

The winter weather has fled for the time being, with warmer than normal temperatures that have kept m any of the lakes from freezing over. This has led to the delay of the annual Ice Fishing Derby, put off for two weeks to (hopefully) allow more ice to form on the various lakes where the derby will take place. This has also led to a delay in at least one sled dog race, maybe two as the snow cover is spotty at best and the thin ice on the lakes have created big gaps in the race route.

Some of the less informed folks are blaming global warming, but the rest of us know it's the side effect of El Niño as we've seen this more than once during El Niño years. Some of those same folks who blame global warming have chosen to ignore the previous two winters which saw well below normal temperatures and heavy snowfall...unless they're going to pin the blame on that weather on global warming as well, which the will.

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How many times have we heard people claiming the moon landings were faked, that 9/11 was an inside job, or a litany of world events were the product of widespread conspiracies?

I've been hearing them for decades.

My one gripe about them all is that with the large number of people who would need to be involved there would be no way it would remain a secret, and particularly for decades. The larger number of people involved in such conspiracies, the larger the chance that someone would spill the beans in increasingly short periods of time.

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I know of very few of my acquaintances who are supporting him, but almost everyone agrees he's been bringing up many important topics the GOP establishment has been ignoring for years. If nothing else he's forcing the other GOP candidates to address those issues, something the GOPe hasn't liked.

Will I vote for Trump during the New Hampshire Primary? No effin' way. Will I vote for him in November if he ends up being the GOP nominee? Yes, but I'll be holding my nose as I do so.

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Some corporations get so big that they believe they can dictate to their customers what to buy. But examples abound that disprove that notion, some of which meant the bankruptcy and dissolution of many companies who ignored the old axiom “The customer's always right.”

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I filled up for $1.629/gallon a week and a half ago and I've seen prices just above $1.50 just south of here. I figure it's only a matter of time unless there's a huge disruption in oil production somewhere (the Middle East, maybe).

I have been enjoying the lower gas prices, but it hasn't affected my driving habits in the least as I still drive the same number of miles as when gas was at $4/gallon.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the ice is either missing or too thin, the temps will be near 50ºF this week, and where I am not complaining about not having to make use of a snowblower.

1/29/2016

I've covered this approach to fusion before, one first proposed by the late physicist Robert Bussard and patented by him in 1985. (The new patent improves upon Bussard's original patent.) Unlike the two main types of fusion reactors, tokamak (toroidal magnetic 'bottle') and inertial confinement (lasers), polywell takes a different approach, using electrostatic fusion in a reactor that has been dubbed “Wiffle Ball” since the magnet loops make the reactor resemble a great big wiffle ball.

Will this approach lead to a breakthrough and bring fusion onto the playing field for power generation? Once can only hope. It has shown considerable promise while costing a fraction of either the ITER (tokamak) or NIF (laser) programs. Until recently it even received funding from the US Navy, one of the biggest users of nuclear power. Funding ceased due to budget cutbacks but the Navy is still interested in polywell fusion.

Should it come to fruition, fusion power can quickly overtake fission nuclear power, particularly since the cost to build a polywell reactor will be a fraction of the cost of even the newer Generation III and IV fission reactors.

I have no doubt the usual suspects will find some reason to be against polywell fusion even though it could well be the answer to all of our energy needs while eliminating the problems of high level long-lived spent nuclear fuel at the same time. I expect someone will decry how it will greatly deplete the supply of deuterium (we'll only have a few million years supply) and boron, the fuels used in the polywell reactors.

I case you haven't noticed, the blog URL is pointing to my backup site. A problem with the DNS used by the company that's been hosting Weekend Pundit forced me to forward to the backup site.

While a bit bare bones, it serves it's purpose and will be updated to include links to Ye Olde Blogroll and other interesting sites. Please bear with me as I make the appropriate changes to the blog template.

1/24/2016

While the Mid-Atlantic states are recovering from Snowzilla, we're enjoying a sunny day. Thought the temps won't be above freezing today, the sunshine is helping to melt what little ice and snow remain on our driveway.

Even with the nice weather we're limiting our outdoors time as there are a ton of things we need to get done before the start of the workweek. That's the way it goes sometimes.

This is something long overdue as too many of these property owners have banned guns while doing little to ensure the safety of the people on those properties.

All one has to do is look at some of the mass shootings that have taken place and you'll see most of them took place on properties that were gun-free zones. Some mass shooters indicated they chose those locations because they knew no one would have guns, giving them a free-fire zone to exploit.

If you're going to declare your commercial property a gun-free zone then you must also be obliged to provide adequate security to protect the now-unarmed patrons. If you don't, that shows depraved indifference and that should be a punishable action, either civil or criminal.

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The New England Patriots hopes of going to the SuperBowl were dashed when they lost to Denver, 20-18. Seeing just how good the Carolina Panthers are this season, I'm almost glad they didn't make it. Frankly, I doubt Denver is good enough to beat them.

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The problem with this argument is that alcohol has been in Germany for a long, long time, and there was never a mass of rapes and sex assaults as there was in Cologne and other German cities on New Year’s Eve. The cause of the rapes and sex assaults was the Islamic attitude toward Infidel women — that they can be taken and used sexually (cf. Qur’an 4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, 33:50, 70:30). But no one, least of all the German authorities, wants to face that fact.

That won't last long. I find it interesting that Muslims like this are outright admitting that their fellow Muslims are so weak willed that they are incapable of resisting temptation. Or could it be that their cultural prohibitions are so antiquated that savagery is tolerated all in the name of Allah. They they think Germany will bow to their demands shows just how foolish they are. It is more likely Germany will ban them and deport them wholesale...with prejudice.

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I guess it's easier for some people to blame others for their own failings and poor decisions.

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I have to admit I am becoming more entranced with Ted Cruz as we fast approach the New Hampshire Primary. I wouldn't mind seeing a Cruz/Fiorina or a Cruz/Christie ticket.

I don't care for Trump even though he is bringing up truths that the GOP establishment and the Democrats have been trying to ignore for some time. I think that explains why he's been attracting a lot of people, They're tired of being ignored by both parties.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the political rhetoric has been dialed up to '11', the number of campaign flyers in our mailboxes has tripled, and where we can't wait for the first round of the political silly season to be over.

1/23/2016

I have to admit to a little bit of “Let's see how you like it!” thinking in regards to the blizzard pelting the Mid-Atlantic states.

Being a hardy Yankee in northern New England gives me just a little gravitas since we see snowfalls like the one places like Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and a host of other cities are experiencing at the moment, but we see them just about every winter, and in some cases more than once in any given winter.

Then again, we're used to them and are well prepared to deal with them. With few exceptions, we rarely see folks clearing store shelves in anticipation of what to us is a not unusual storm. However, we do still have to put up with the ubiquitous Storm Center TV news and the overblown drama and dire “We're all gonna DIE!” level warnings about not going out into the storm unless it's absolutely necessary. Well, duh.

I don 't know about you, but I'm not one to go out in a storm just because I can. I never have been. If I'm out in one it's because there's a pretty darned good reason, one that makes it necessary even though I don't really want to be out there. The most common reason – snowblowing the driveway in order to stay ahead of the anticipated snowfall totals. Sometimes it's easier to go out and snowblow once or twice during the storm than it is to clear all of the snow after it's all over, particularly if snowfall is expected to be above two feet.

So far our winter up here in New Hampshire has been rather benign. We haven't had the days and weeks of below zero temperatures or storm after storm after storm. We figure we're due a respite after the past two winters of heavy snowfall and below normal temperatures. A little breather now and then is a good thing and we're hoping to make the most of it. In the meantime we're more than happy to watch others struggle with winter weather we consider normal up here.

1/17/2016

It is actually looking like winter around the Lakes Region, with actual snow on the ground that isn't melting away and disappearing later in the day. I figure we'll be seeing these small hit-or-miss storms throughout the winter as the first few storms tend to set the pattern for those that follow.

Frankly, I won't be disappointed were that to be the case this winter as we could use a break after last winter which saw weeks of below zero temperatures and one snowfall after another only days apart, with some topping 18 inches. The snow didn't melt away and some road surfaces weren't cleared until March.

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Spoken like a true socialist.

Bernie Sanders has been making all kinds of promises about what his administration will do for the people, but like most progressives, he won't tell anyone how he'll pay for everything for everyone. I guess he'll use the usual “magical thinking” to make all of the funds appear from nowhere, or he'll pull something from the pages of the Marxist Economics Handbook, or worse, use Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged as a guidebook.

Heaven help us all.

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The New England Patriots defeated the Kansas City Chiefs at Foxborough last night, 27-20. They'll play either the Denver Broncos or the Pittsburgh Steelers next week.

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Have you noticed that all of the Democrat debates so far have been scheduled for a time when it was unlikely anyone would be watching? If it wasn't taking place during a hotly contested NFL game it was during one of the college Division I football games.

Tonight's debate starts at 9PM, a night when not nearly as many people will be watching TV. I expect Madam Secretary and The Good Wife will see more viewers than the debate.

One has to ask, was this done on purpose? In my mind, I'd have to say yes because if the Democrat debates had as many viewers as the Republican debates almost everyone would see the Democrat candidates are weak, particularly Hillary.

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I think it was a combination of things. She is one of three people in the race who haven’t got experience in political office, and she was the least well-known of the three prior to running. Therefore, because people didn’t have a backlog of impressions about her, smear campaigns have had greater force because they fill in the blanks. When she began to rise, for instance, and people were just getting to know her, I noticed a veritable flood of commenters arriving on blog after blog after blog spouting the same talking points over and over. It was clearly some sort of organized effort, although by exactly whom I don’t know.

Read the whole thing.

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Yeah, I'm sure the Warmists will be touting this as a reason to ignore the hiatus in warming. But if one looks at the data from pristine weather stations (stations located in areas that have not changed over the past 100 years plus) in the US and balloon data from all over the world, it matches what the satellites have been reporting since 1979.

So it all comes down to the Warmist version of “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”

I can see if someone wants to up their connection speed but they're using an older DOCSIS 2.0 or 1.1 modem. Then it makes sense. But what if they're perfectly satisfied with the speeds they have? Do they really need to switch to a faster (or much faster) modem than the one they have now?

Is Comcast pushing for everyone to upgrade to one of the new DOCSIS 3.1 modems even if they presently have a DOCSIS 3.0 modem? (DOCSIS 3.0 is capable of speeds up to 300Mbs. DOCSIS 3.1 can handle 1Gbs or more.) Just how fast is fast enough?

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As a follow-up there comes the news that Walmart has reconsidered building new stores in poor Washington DC neighborhoods, seeing it as a money losing proposition in light of the District's minimum wage rising to $11.50 and proposed new minimum of $15 an hour. District leaders are angry that “Walmart has gone back on its promise”, but when the economic conditions changed that made the proposed new stores unprofitable right from the get go, why would Walmart build them? They aren't in business to lose money.

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Perhaps this is a good time to mention yet another example of the unintended consequences of artificially raising the cost of doing business.

In this case Connecticut has raised taxes to the point that it's been driving both businesses and wealthy residents to relocate out of state. The latest corporation to pull the plug in the Nutmeg State: General Electric.

If GE leaves how long will it be before a number of other deep pocket corporations will head for lower cost states?

From the Connecticut governor’s office on down, Democratic officials argue that the GE move to Boston had nothing to do with taxes. Instead they say it was an effort to merge with Boston’s high-tech culture.

When you tax something more you get less of it. Art Laffer’s famous curve has kicked in with a vengeance in Connecticut, where higher tax rates are producing lower-than-expected tax revenues and killing jobs and growth.

It’s no coincidence that well-to-do residents are moving to zero-income-tax Florida, and major corporations like GE are seeking greener pastures. It’s also no surprise that GE boss Jeff Immelt began talking publically (sic) about a corporate relocation right after Connecticut passed its gigantic tax hike last summer.

You know it's really bad in Connecticut when neighboring Massachusetts is seen as a more tax-friendly state even though it's often derided as 'Taxachusetts'.

They'll be more than welcome to take a look at New Hampshire as well as it has no state income tax or sales tax.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the lake is still mostly open water, the snowfalls have been minor, and where we've only had to fire up the snowblowers twice so far.

1/16/2016

During the campaigns of both Hillary and Bernie we keep hearing promises to raise the minimum wage, pretending that somehow doing so will end poverty. The big problem with that promise is that it will have just the opposite effect, putting more people into the poorhouse when they lose the jobs they have that aren't worth the $15 an hour some have proposed as the new minimum wage. It proves to anyone with even a smattering of economic knowledge that neither Hillary or Bernie have any understanding of the bad effects such a wage increase.

U.S cities that implemented big minimum-wage hikes to $10 an hour or more in 2015 have seen a strikingly similar aftermath: Job gains have fallen to multiyear lows at restaurants, hotels and other leisure and hospitality venues.

The data aren't, for the most part, stark and reliable enough to amount to smoking-gun proof.

But Chicago, Oakland, San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. — all on the leading edge of the push for big minimum wage hikes — all show worrisome job trends.

Do that nationwide and watch what happens to hiring then. One thing I can promise: teen unemployment will skyrocket because no one wants to hire anyone with no job experience at what are really skilled or semi-skilled labor wages. Some won't be able to afford hiring anyone at that pay rate.

Then again I expect they're start blaming corporate greed as the only factor that prompted the closings. But what so many of them forget is that any business, including Walmart, has to make a profit or go out of business. Like many other businesses out there, Walmart's profit margin is not large, sitting somewhere around 7%. Only the fact that they have such a huge market share generates the large monetary gains. Start eating into that profit to meet the demands of the progressive economic 'experts' and the profits will turn to losses and the business will spiral into eventual bankruptcy, yet it will somehow still be the fault of the “greedy” business owners.

1/15/2016

As the campaigning here in New Hampshire has ramped up, the tone of what advertising has been aired has changed as well.

Until recently, much of the campaign ads have touted how this GOP candidate or the other are not Hillary or painted Hillary as just an extension of Obama. But now that ads, at least on the GOP side, have turned away from painting their candidate in a favorable light to tearing down one of more of their fellow candidates. The tone has gone from one of friendly rivalry to full on mud slinging and denigration of character. This hasn't been a gradual change, but one that took place overnight, with no attack ads one day and slews of them the next day.

Two things are driving this, in my opinion: the large number of GOP candidates and the fast approaching Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire Primary.

I can't wait for February 9th to get here so we can get past this and get a few months respite before both the convention and the general campaign leading up to November.

1/10/2016

Time to post has been limited as of late, much of that being due to duties I took on after town elections last year. I find I spend time I would have used to craft a post being devoted to those duties. At least at this level, all transactions with the people in my town are face-to-face, something I much prefer compared to a lot of higher offices handling such interactions by way of e-mail, letters, or phone.

This time of year the time needed to perform my duties increases greatly as we approach town meeting, between budgeting, zoning amendments, requests from non-governmental agencies that provide services to the town, and concerns from my fellow residents. There's also that once-every-four-years presidential primary that also takes a lot of attention to deal with. Once past the primary and town meeting the demands on my time will diminish considerably and I'll be able to post about this, that, and the other thing more often.

And so it goes in small town America.

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Reading the comments shows that more than a few people agree that the chickens have come home to roost when it comes to denigrating “white heterosexual males” and the culture they've built. Why would any man help someone who will punish them for doing so?

It isn't like like no one warned anyone about the bad effects of such drastic increases. They were devoutly ignored by the proponents who only saw this as a means of gaining support for other political plans to make the American people even more dependent upon a government that really doesn't care.

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Many, many people have wondered whether the Internet has made people more stupid than was so in generations prior to the Internet Age and I’ve wondered about this also. I still think that the answer is both ‘no’ and ‘yes.’

Many mistake large amounts of information for large amounts of intelligence and the Internet has provided many stupid people with the illusion of intelligence. Be advised: stupidity is not defined as limited intelligence. Stupidity consists of the limited ability to interpret information, coupled with the refusal to acknowledge the need for this ability. Ever known an idiot who was full of hubris and arrogance about some information she has that you don’t have?

We all have experienced that on more than one occasion. If one does not have the ability to be able to separate the information wheat from the chaff, then they are nothing more than 'meat terminals' regurgitating all information available on the 'Net and add nothing to any discussion or debate other than pseudo-knowledge of questionable validity.

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I had a discussion with yet another couple of young Bernie Sanders supporters. I talked with them about Bernie's ideas and how they thought they took a fresh approach to 'problems' that they believe need to be solved.

I did politely disabuse them of the notion that Bernie's ideas are new, that they've been put forth before and tried before and didn't work. They only sounded new to them because they haven't been on this Earth long enough to have been exposed to them before or to see the harmful effects his 'solutions' to the 'problems' that aren't really problems.

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The New Housing Bubble, same as the Old Housing Bubble. This time the same folks who brought us NINJA mortgages (No Income, No Job), Interest-Only mortgages, and Sub-prime mortgages are setting their sights on high-risk immigrants.

This one will end no differently than the last one, and yet again the taxpayers will be the ones footing the bill to bail out the Too-Big-To-Fail financial institutions who buy into these things.

It's time to stop this rip-off of both vulnerable wannabe homeowners and the taxpayers. One step would be to reinstate some version of the Glass-Steagal Act that kept commercial and investment banking as two separate entities. At the moment banks can gamble with depositors' money and if they lose it all can go to the federal government for a bailout. The Privatized Profit/Socialized Loss cronyism has got to stop.

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...to the angry liberal who sat next to me on the commuter rail: I don’t hate you. I don’t have any ill feelings toward you. I don’t wish to do you harm. And I don’t regret sitting next to you. On the contrary; I feel bad for you. It must hurt carrying that much hate inside of you.

I've known more than a few folks like that, too. More than one became semi-hysterical when they caught a glimpse of my legally carried Glock .40 tucked into my holster. (No, I didn't intentionally make its presence known. They saw it as I got up from finishing my meal and putting on my coat at the former Paugus Diner.)

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the returning warm weather has also brought heavy rain, the last of the Christmas decorations are finally coming down, and where people are starting to prepare for both the New Hampshire Primary and town meeting.

1/03/2016

It appears we're headed for the deep freeze, going from well above normal temps to below normal temps in a matter of a couple of days. It's expected to get below 0ºF tonight, meaning I'll have to make sure to stoke the Official Weekend Pundit Woodstove properly before going to bed tonight.

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BeezleBub got back from the WP In-Laws last night, bringing his new girlfriend, Polka Girl, to The Manse for the next couple of days. She flew in from Ohio the other day to spend some time with her favorite farmer. His friend Guinness also has his girlfriend visiting, in this case from Alaska. The four of them have been hanging out the past couple of days, catching up.

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I find it interesting that Al Shabaab, an Al Qaeda offshoot, took Hillary's suggestion and started using The Donald's speech about banning new Muslim immigration as a recruiting tool. Some may say her accusation was accurate, but the video itself wasn't created until weeks after Hillary made the accusation and wasn't made by ISIS.

The Donald has used that as the basis of a snappy comeback, reminding everyone that if it hadn't been for Obama and then-Secretary of State Clinton, ISIS would have never come into being to begin with.

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Of course I am speaking of liberalism in its present form, which is really Progressivism, a political ideology that works very hard to ignore human nature or to corrupt it through 'education' (which has failed again and again), indoctrination (which has failed again and again), or brute force (which has failed again and again).

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A city councilman fed up with police from other counties racing after small-time crooks in his Jackson, Mississippi, neighborhood has called for residents to throw things at officers in pursuit.

Now, the governor and a county sheriff are threatening to have prosecutors investigate him over the suggestion.

Writes Glenn Reynolds on this kerfuffle, “Remember, the police, ultimately, aren’t there to protect the citizenry from the criminal class. They’re there to protect the criminal class from the citizenry.”

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I don't know how they managed to do it, but the New England Patriots managed to lose their fourth game in a row, in this case losing to the Miami Dolphins, 20-10. I cannot believe they lost to this Punch & Judy team. Both the Pats offense and defense fell apart against one of the worst teams in the AFC.

The only saving grace the Patriots have is that they have a first-week playoff bye, giving more time for the first string players to recuperate and maybe, just maybe be ready to play in the playoffs. But I'm not holding my breath.

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And that's the abbreviated news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the Ice Fishing Derby is about 6 weeks away, there's not a bit of ice anywhere on the lake, and where sub-zero temps are on the way.

1/01/2016

Now that 2015 can be seen only in the rear view mirror, I have this to say: Good riddance.

2015 was not a great year for my family, nor was it all that great for most of the rest of you. Let's take a brief look back at the year that was 2015:

We had economy that was still bumping along 8 years after the bottom fell out in 2007 and it hasn't really recovered. Between a U6 unemployment rate that is far too high (~12%), a labor participation rate that is the lowest it's been in over 40 years and is still falling, and signs that we're about to enter yet another recession before fully recovering from the present one because of interference and gross mismanagement by the present administration. What's worse is that we're seeing the same kind of mistakes that were made before this recession being made again, and with the blessings of the Obama Administration.

Obamacare is falling apart, never having lived up to any of the promises made by Obama and the Democrats. The decay has sped up with more exchanges going bankrupt with nothing to replace them. It has driven a lot of health care providers to leave the profession, put bigger strains on a health care system that has already been weakened by artificially induced shortages, and left countless millions stripped of health insurance they can no longer afford in order to provide coverage for those who didn't have such coverage before, leaving a net increase in the numbers without health insurance.

Congress has been a disappointment since the last election. The GOP holds majorities in the House and Senate and has not managed to do anything to rein in reckless and wasteful spending, knuckling under to The One in regards to that, deal with the illegal immigration issues, go after the rogue federal agencies that seem to be beholden to no one and nothing, even the US Constitution.

US foreign policy is a joke and has been for years. This past year has seen the reputation of the US further damaged by a weak 'lead from behind' mentality by the Obama Administration. No one takes us seriously anymore except our allies, and they know Obama will abandon them at the drop of a hat. He has forgotten the lesson of Teddy Roosevelt, one that Ronald Reagan took to heart: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” It is better to be respected (and maybe feared) rather than be liked.

Another thing to be derided is the amount of military spending, cutting back in areas we need the most all while increasing spending in other areas that are, quite frankly, boondoggles that profit no one but the cronies. Apparently no one has studied history, specifically our own, to see where this will lead us – poorly equipped and supported armed forces incapable of deploying where needed in a timely fashion.

We have also suffered under yet another year of Obama's imperial presidency. Need I say more?

I could keep going on and on about 2015, but frankly it would be too depressing. Let's take a 'look' forward in the new year.

In regards to foreign relations and the War on Terror, there are only five words needed to define the coming year: This year will be worse.

When it comes to new decrees handed down by The One because Congress stands in his way of taking grossly unconstitutional actions, there are only five words needed to define the coming year: This year will be worse.

And finally, the every-four-years political silly season will reach its peak and we will elect another president...whereupon three days after the election the next set of candidates will start planning their run for the 2020 election.

I wish I could have been more positive about my view to the near future, but unless we break the cycle of unwillingness for either party to truly compromise (meaning actual compromise and not the present “Sit down shut up, and vote the way I tell you to vote” version of compromise) we will not be able to undo the years of damage done by Obama and rebuild America's reputation amongst both its allies and adversaries.